Abstract (in English)

It is necessary to promote and enhance African languages as
intangible cultural heritage. This heritage needs conservation
and management in the form of language planning and policy
making that would contribute towards the restoration of the
indigenous speakers’ humanity, identity and culture. Our
indigenous languages seek to focus on African philosophy,
aesthetics, art, performing arts, politics, sociology, sport and
other subjects. These languages would explore ways in which
the forms of African cultural life and expression will help to
shape, inform and influence cultures and intellectual traditions
across the globe. It is necessary to transcend colonial alienation
as “part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles of
[Zimbabweans] and African peoples” whose indigenous
languages “were associated with negative qualities of
backwardness, underdevelopment, humiliation and
punishment.” (Ngugi, 1981:28). This paper will testify the
superiority of our indigenous languages to English. The
researcher believes in the maxim “free your mind”: the mind
must be liberated even from the confines of biased Afro-centric
thought. These languages will convey the profound need for the
Zimbabwean people to be re-located historically, economically,
socially, linguistically, politically, and philosophically. For a
number of years, Africans have been devoid of their cultural,
economic, religious, political and social heritage. They have been
living on the periphery of Europe. It is this “illusion of the
fringes” that this paper seeks to eliminate and restore “the
African person as an agent in human history…” (Asante,
2003:1)This will answer questions on how African cultural and
intellectual traditions radically and indelibly shape the world.
In demanding to know the total system of truth about the world,
the first step is to know the reality of our own existence through
our indigenous languages.